{"id":36199,"date":"2019-03-19T07:22:48","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T07:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36199"},"modified":"2019-03-19T07:22:48","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T07:22:48","slug":"there-was-blood-everywhere-nz-mosque-attack-survivor-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36199","title":{"rendered":"‘There was blood everywhere’: NZ mosque attack survivor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Christchurch, New Zealand <\/strong>–\u00a0At about 2pm on Friday, when the gunfire at Christchurch’s Linwood mosque finally let up, Abdi Sheikh Hassan found himself underneath a pile of bodies.<\/p>\n

Hassan says he was at the front of the mosque’s prayer hall, close to the imam, when a man armed with an assault weapon approached the building and opened fire.<\/p>\n

Trapped by the spray of bullets, worshippers in the back rows piled on top of those at the front.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>A number of them never got up again.<\/p>\n

“There was blood everywhere,” Hassan recalls.<\/p>\n

Shaking with fear but unharmed, the 28-year-old stood up to take a look at the carnage. His friend, lying next to him, had been shot in the head.<\/p>\n

“Seven people were dead and so many people were injured, [among them] women and children \u2026 everyone was in shock.”<\/p>\n

Hassan would later find out that Christchurch’s small,\u00a0tight-knit, Muslim community had been the target of the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand’<\/a>s modern history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shortly before the assault at Linwood, the gunman had killed more than 40 worshippers at the Al Noor mosque, some seven\u00a0<\/span>kilometres\u00a0<\/span>away<\/span>. Altogether, at least 50 people were murdered, and dozens more wounded, in what\u00a0Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, called a well-planned “terrorist attack”<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 28-year-old Australian man, identified as Brenton Harrison Tarrant,<\/a> has been charged with one count of murder so far, with many more charges expected to be levelled against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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At least 50 people were killed in Friday’s attack on two Christchurch mosques [Mark Baker\/AP]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One of those presumed killed during the massacre was three-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim. Hassan knows the family well.<\/p>\n

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Students killed in the New Zealand attacks remembered by classmates<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Like Mucaad’s Somali-born father, Adan Ibrahim, Hassan also fled violence and instability in Somalia eight years ago, in search of a place “at peace”.<\/p>\n

“Security was bad at home and we didn’t think anything bad could happen here,” Hassan says.<\/p>\n

“But we, as Muslims, believe anything that happens, good or bad, is Allah testing us, to see if we are following the rules of the Prophet Muhammad,” he adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About 50,000 Muslims call New Zealand home, a small minority in a population of nearly five million. From India and Indonesia to Pakistan and Palestine, the Pacific Island’s Muslims come from around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Mourners across New Zealand have paid tribute to the victims of the mosque shootings [Edgar Su\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In Christchurch, a city of nearly 400,000 people, Muslims number no more than a few thousand people, and the tragedy of Friday’s loss has impacted nearly every Muslim household in the city.<\/p>\n

“We know each other, in the Muslim community, very well,” Hassan says. “We spent a long time praying together … and now we are busy with organising how to bury all the bodies.”<\/p>\n

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Abdi Sheikh Hassan on Christchurch attack<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Despite the tragedy, Hassan has no plans to leave Christchurch. Having trained as an engineer and built a life in New Zealand, he is determined to carry on living and working in the place he now calls home.<\/p>\n

Part of that, he says, means going back to the shuttered Al Noor and Linwood mosques once they are reopened.<\/p>\n

“I still believe now it is a safe place and that New Zealand is the best country for us,” he says.<\/p>\n

“In any place, you can find good and bad people, but most of the people here, Alhamdullilah [thanks to God], are good people and look after us.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What Allah has given us, we are happy with.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christchurch, New Zealand –\u00a0At about 2pm on Friday, when the gunfire at Christchurch’s Linwood mosque finally let up, Abdi Sheikh Hassan found himself underneath a pile of bodies. Hassan says he was at the front of the mosque’s prayer hall, close to the imam, when a man armed with an assault weapon approached the building…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}